"The case against single-sex schooling."

Rebecca Bigler,  a professor of psychology and women’s and gender studies at the University of Texas,  and Lise Eliot, a professor of neuroscience at the Chicago Medical School, push back against what they call the "pseudoscience" of single-sex education:

The sex differences that have been identified are small and statistical... Scientists agree there is much more overlap than difference between boys and girls in their brains and behavior...


[T]he idea that “boys and girls learn differently” is unsupported by scientific evidence. Decades of research have failed to identify reliable differences in the way male and female brains process, store, or retrieve information. For example, the popular idea that “boys are visual learners” and “girls are auditory learners” is simply untrue....

While single-sex schooling does nothing unique to improve academic achievement, gender segregated classrooms are detrimental to children in several ways. First, research in developmental psychology has clearly shown that teachers’ labeling and segregating of social groups increases children’s stereotyping and prejudice...

Second, research on peer relations indicates that children who interact mostly with same-gender peers develop increasingly narrow skill sets and interests. For example, boys who spend more time with other boys become increasingly aggressive; girls who spend more time with other girls become more sex-typed in their play. Developmental research finds better mental health outcomes among children who develop a mix of traditionally masculine and feminine skills and interests — like playing competitive sports and discussing emotions — compared to more one-dimensional peers.

Most importantly, single-sex schooling reduces boys’ and girls’ opportunities to learn from and about each other....

But won't they do that outside of school? What I mean to say is that, at the very least, you have to concede that boys and girls tend to distract each other. As for all that other stuff, I think studies of sex difference are pretty crude and result-oriented, but we ought to care about the way generalizations — even generalizations supported by decently run studies — are used to limit or discriminate against individuals. My instinct — possibly feminine! — is to let different experiments in education take place. Let's judge those particular schools individually, and not stereotype single-sex education as either sexist or a cure-all.